Jello Biafra, the former frontman of the legendary punk band Dead Kennedys, was a huge influence to me as I was growing up. The lyrical content for the Dead Kennedy, which of course was written by Biafra, were powerful and rang true. Granted, he tended to be quite dramatic - often overly dramatic - with a lot of things. He even admits as much in one of his more recent albums, in the song Enchanted Thoughtfest:
But when I hurl my word bombs.
How much should be believed?
Later in the song, he advises the listener to question everything that he is saying:
We all believe
What we want to believe
Don't just question authority
Don't forget to question me
I have heard some people criticize Biafra as arrogant and condescending. But urging his listeners to question him as well seems exactly the opposite of that. To me, that is downright humble, acknowledging that he can and has been wrong.
In other words, he urges you to do your own thinking, and not simply to rely on anyone as some kind of infallible authority figure. There is an obvious danger in empowering somebody with that kind of power. At it's worst, we get an authoritarian leader. Look at the cultish following of Donald Trump presently. It sometimes seems that whenever he reaches new lows in his personal and political conduct, he received even more loyal support. It is exactly the opposite of how it should be. We clearly see the danger of that presently in the United States, having just been reminded of how fragile our democracy actually is.
Here's the thing: Jello predicted what is happening right now. It seems that everything that has come to pass is something that Biafra predicted decades ago. Back then, I did not want to believe what he was saying about how the two major parties actually had few differences, agreeing with each other far too often, and so they made a big show of those points on which they did disagree, mostly for the illusion of choice. What he argued, basically, was that private, moneyed, corporate interests controlled both of the two major parties, and that what that meant in a real sense was that, in fact, we had two different branches of one political party, which was why change never seemed to happen. He even asked that very question in the late eighties and early nineties, when it seemed like the whole world was changing. The Berlin Wall had fallen, eastern Europe broke out of the hold that the Soviet Union had over them, then the Soviet Union itself dissolved and the Cold War ended, and apartheid ended in southern Africa. There also had been the protests in China, although those ended in violent bloodshed that ended that in a hurry. Still, dictatorships were coming to an end in South America. Indeed, things did seem to be changing all around the world, except for here in the United States. He was right about that.
There were other things that he accurately predicted. He predicted that members of the one party system that were posing as a two party system were trying to install a dictatorship. But he warned that they had grown wiser over the many years, and so were implementing more authoritarian tendencies incrementally, so slowly that almost nobody would notice, much less trigger the alarms. Frankly, he was right about that, as well. This was something that he predicted in the late 80's or early 90's. Only now, well into the 21st century, are we seeing that, indeed, this appears to be coming true. It feels like this was their plan all along.
He also predicted that all of this would be accompanied by a dumbing down of America. Religion would play a part in this, in stressing a certain blind faith over facts, over truths that you see right in front of your eyes. Indeed, given the role that the religious right - some are now beginning to call them Christian Fascists, which sounds about right - I think that it is safe to assume that Biafra was right about this, as well.
Moreover, he saw that the trend towards privatization was not only building a new elitist class - he once referred to this system as New Feudalism - but that education was deliberately being devalued. And you know what? You see how our American schools - which used to rank at or near the top back in the 1950's and 1960's - now regularly rank closer to the bottom amongst developed nations. Almost everyone acknowledges, at least on some level, that our schools, much like our political system, is completely broken. And when you see how teachers are severely underappreciated and underpaid, often made to be scapegoats for the failures of the educational system, and you see that supposed budget hawks (I mean that they want to cut the budget for everything that helps people, but never want to make any cuts to either the military industrial complex or corporate welfare and tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans) always target schools for further budget cuts, with the obvious negative effects. Always, it seems that teachers are only given the finger of blame, and their profession is often insulted and derided. They are underpaid, which makes teaching an undesirable occupation to pursue. Then, when there is a max exodus, like Florida is currently seeing, the supposedly high standards for being a teacher are made much more lax. I ran into this post by somebody named Preston Hickert on Facebook, and believe that he is right on the money in almost everything that he says here:
Hey, just so we’re all on the same page: any effort to lower the requirements to become a teacher is actually a strategic move to chip away at the integrity of public education so they can call it a failure and then privatize it (see also: banning books, crt, rewriting history, mental health, lgbtqia+ attacks, safety, etc). instead, how about we vote for people who increase funding for public education and support for educators so the average tenure for a new teacher (with years of college and preparation, btw) is longer than three years. also, just because you were once a student doesn’t mean you know how teaching works. thanks for coming to my TED talk.
https://www.facebook.com/preston.hickert/posts/10225766087486605
All of this, again, feels like something that Jello Biafra predicted all of those years, even decades, ago. He was pretty much right. There are a lot of lyrics of his that are profound and revealing. However, arguably my favorite lyrics from him are from one particular song from the "Bedtime For Democracy" album (1986). It is called "Great Wall of China," and I thought it would be worth it to share those lyrics here, penned by Jello Biafra. Again, see if much of what he is predicting here did not, in fact, come to pass since:
Great Wall of China, it's so big it's seen from outer space
Put there to keep the starving neighbors locked outside the gates
So what's changed today? Empires hoard more than they need
And peasants threaten our comfort
We'll build a great wall around our power
Build a great wall around our power
Bankrupt L.A.'s streetcar line so people pay more to drive
Plant strategic freeways to divide neighborhoods by color lines
We'd rather pay for riot squads than pump the ghetto back to life
We'll let your schools decay on purpose
To build a great wall around our power
Another great wall around our power
Warlords in gray suits take a different route to work each day
Secondhand green berets form the companies' private armies
We'll take all your gold but won't teach reading or feed your poor
The league of gentlemen would rather feed guns to puppet dictators
There's too many people in your world and refugees are expensive
When they trickle down into our soil we hunt them and arrest them
Classify them insane and put them back on the next plane
To the waiting arms of the same death squads they fled
We've build a great wall around our power
Worldwide great wall around our power
Economic great wall around our power
Give us your poor, your tired, your weak
We'll send 'em right back to their certain death
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